


geborgenheit

by troiing



Series: pain told love [2]
Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: Alma Cackle on the sidelines, Chronic Pain, F/F, Hesper!verse, Home, suggestion of workplace ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 16:23:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15889683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troiing/pseuds/troiing
Summary: geborgenheit: to feel completely safe, like nothing could ever harm you; security, comfort, trust, satisfaction, acceptance and love from others.





	geborgenheit

**Author's Note:**

> requested by an anon

You’re thirty-four when Alma Cackle hires you on. She isn’t a woman to be trifled with, and you respect that. Despite that your relationship with her is somewhat tenuous even at the beginning, her daughter takes a shine to you right away.

Ada teaches the fourth and fifth year spell science classes and botany, and she oversees the greenhouses. You learn to find each other there, in the conservatory.

She’s brighter than you’re accustomed to. Lively, but soft and gentle. Ten or twelve years older than you. Kind and full of zest. Pink cardigans, flowing skirts. Flyaway brown curls that she rarely bothers to tame. Clear blue eyes.

At first she reminds you, just a little, of another very bright, very kind, very pink witch. Or perhaps more than a little.

You’re unsure how you feel about this, but as you know each other better, she develops a life and personhood of her own in your mind, becomes like Pippa only in small ways. She is Ada, just Ada, and she speaks up for you when you take ill in ways you cannot explain to Alma, who is all but ready to give you the boot for missing so many classes so soon into your employment.

You don’t know how to explain the pain that isn’t pain.

But of an evening when you cannot sleep, can barely speak for the pain, Ada brings you a sleeping draught, unpins your hair, and promises to cover your classes and speak to her mother on your behalf tomorrow. She does; Alma bends, and you stay, and when you feel better—not whole, but you never feel whole—Ada shows you a corner of the greenhouse she has cleared for you. For plants not usually grown in the school greenhouse, for lack of necessity. For potions she knows you brew for yourself, up at all hours when you feel well enough.

You almost, _almost_ allow yourself to cry.

You haven’t seen much kindness in your life. But Ada’s eyes shine as she touches your arm, so softly.

You do not flinch away.

***

You’re forty-eight years old, and accustomed to the relative comfort of the school you’ve lived and taught at for nearly fifteen years now. It’s home. You’ve made it that way; Ada has made it that for you. It’s the closest thing you’ve ever had to a comfortable environment. Your rooms are relatively sparse, but they smell like you, like your things. Like worn leather bindings and the magic you carry within you; like the lavender cuttings in your window and the ash wood you burn in your fireplace.

There’s a balance here, at Cackle’s. You navigate it well, because over the years it has become your normal. You immerse yourself in teaching and the duties of Deputy Headmistress, and you spend your evenings with Ada because it is Ada who gave you this: this security, this thing that is almost, _almost_ comfortable.

***

You don’t sleep at all the night you learn Ada has been unseated as Headmistress. You hurt enough these past few months, various stresses taking their toll on you mentally and physically, and the restless night doesn’t help at all.

You’re helpless as the things you know slip from your grasp, and Pippa doesn’t make it any better. For the span of half a day, she is the villain of your story. She isn’t the girl you remember; you let yourself twist everything about her into wickedness. Cunning. Maybe she didn’t unseat Ada herself, but she was quick like a viper to respond to her fall.

But then, not six hours later, you meet her gaze from across Ada’s office, and the look in her eye reminds you that Ada is not the only person to have loved you since your mother’s passing. You remember that you have missed her. And you remember that you have pushed her away even after confessing as much.

The ground you have been standing on for fifteen years settles again beneath your feet: Ada is reinstated; Cackle’s returns to its usual chaos; you are no longer faced with the reality that you might have to claim Ada’s office as your own.

But your foundation is irrevocably shaken.

***

You’re forty-nine when your world is inexorably changed by that look, and you aren’t quite fifty when you learn why. When you learn that you have been cobbling together a dwelling that has provided shelter and safety, surrounded by people who make you feel like you belong at least a little, but now you know that home is something a little loftier than what you have attained.

For the first time, with Pippa’s body pressed flush against yours and the warmth of her magic nestled in your breast, you dare to hope for something more.

***

Ada is about the age her mother was when the mantle of Headmistress was passed on to her, and ready to pass it on again. You’ve never much wanted to be Headmistress, and you’ve declined the position a few times when she’s mentioned the possibility of you taking over, but you’re pleased to be a part of training a distant niece of Ada’s for the position.

She’s young, has taught for a decade or so, but is unaccustomed to being at the helm when it comes to her peers. She’s very serious, at first. A little stern by nature, but kind, and as she becomes more confident she blossoms. Good: the Headmistress should have a little lightness to her, you think, for you do value a certain amount of balance, and you plan to stay here a few more years yet. There’s no reason not to: you still have years ahead of you, and your daughter will go on to study at your old school next year; if there were a time to take a break, it was certainly while Hesper was growing up, not now that she’s going away.

Had Ada left of her own volition a decade or so ago, you would have followed her. It was Ada who made Cackle’s a home for you, after all; Ada who made you feel like you belonged somewhere, to something.

Now, at sixty-two, you do not have to hope for more than four solid walls and a roof overhead, because you have that, and so much more. Ada cracked you open, gave you the ability to recognize and accept kindness, tenderness, love; Ada cracked you open, and used the light she found inside of you to illuminate your path.

For that, you are grateful, and owe her a great deal. For that, you slip your arms around her and mutter a watery _‘thank you’_ into her neck on the last day of the school year.

She corresponds faithfully with you, and you with her, once a week thereafter.

***

You’re seventy. Hesper will be home on break from Weirdsister’s in two days, and the light of the full moon has Pippa crowned in silver and gold.

You watch her as she dreams, letting the occasional knit of her brow and quiet mumble distract you from the tension in your shoulders. You watch until her expression settles, until she goes still and quiet. Then, gently, you lift a bit of hair out of her face to push it back behind her ear, watching as the moonlight reflects across greying blonde.

“Pippa,” you almost whisper, tracing your thumb down her jaw with a feather’s touch.

She stirs, but doesn’t fully wake. Hums acknowledgement, mumbles a distant “Hiccup,” in reply.

She moves toward you then, closing the distance between your bodies as if drawn in by gravity; nestles herself under your chin and curls her arm around you with a sigh that ghosts across your collarbones and makes you shiver.

You don’t try to stop the smile that curls at your lips; instead, you wrap your arms around her and nuzzle into her hair. “I love you,” you tell her softly.

And Pippa, ever reliable, even in her sleep, mumbles back: “Love you too.”

She won’t remember it in the morning when she kisses your cheek and murmurs _‘morning, Hiccup’_ with sleep in her voice and crust in her eyes. She won’t remember it, but that doesn’t make it less true. Because when she kisses your cheek, she will let her lips linger against your skin a moment over-long, and she will look at you with a devotion that, against all odds, against all your own doubts and insecurities, you have come to expect. And you will feel, in that moment as much as this one, content. Safe. Whole.

_Home._


End file.
